What killing of Hindu teen by India cow vigilantes tells us about Modi 3.0
Al Jazeera
What happens when the vigilantes ‘mistakenly’ shoot a Hindu teenager dead after a 40km chase, thinking he was a Muslim?
At about 1am on August 24, Aryan Mishra, a 19-year-old 12th-grade student received a phone call.
Two of his friends, both sons of Mishra’s landlord, wanted him to join them for a late-night snack – noodles, according to reports.
Mishra soon joined them, grabbing the passenger seat in the landlord’s red SUV in a middle-class neighbourhood in Faridabad, a city in Haryana state on the outskirts of the national capital, New Delhi.
One of the brothers, Harshit Gulati, was at the wheel, while his elder sibling, Shankey Gulati, 26, was in the rear with their mother Sujata Gulati and her friend Kirti Sharma, according to Indian media reports.
As they drove along the largely empty streets of Faridabad, a car with a flashing red and blue beacon on top of it tried to stop them, local media reports said. Such beacons are usually allowed only on government vehicles. But the illegal use of these beacons by private vehicles remains rampant – especially when the owner is politically influential.
